


your grave will not hold you

by mirrorfade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, the knights of ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 14:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5588893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorfade/pseuds/mirrorfade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s said the Knights of Ren are named for a liar. But that’s poetry wrapped up in useless metaphor. It means nothing. </p><p>Unfortunately, it’s also true.</p><p>**</p><p>The Knights of Ren are merciless. Even to their leader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your grave will not hold you

**Author's Note:**

> Taken and twisted from a prompt about the Knights of Ren and conditioning, and my own thoughts about what a sociopathic Force-user might look like. TW for child abuse. 
> 
> Title taken from "Sinnerman", by Sixteen Horse Power.

It’s said the Knights of Ren are named for a liar. But that’s poetry wrapped up in useless metaphor. It means nothing. 

Unfortunately, it’s also true.

He’s not really surprised when some of them finally turn on him. They walk in the dark. This is what they do. 

The betrayal, Kylo thinks, was certainty inevitable. 

**

She’s been there almost since the beginning, some pale mercenary Luke Skywalker found wandering around on Jakku and converted to their mission. Their cause. Such as it is. Not that it ever takes much to convince them. People are so _easy_ when it comes to the Force. All it ever takes is a conversation, three words slipped into ready ears and a hand outstretched to catch whatever falls out. The mercenary is no different. Luke buys her a drink in the hollowed out shell of a dead ship, relics of a battle from the old days, and the mercenary listens as the great truth is laid out in front of her. (And it is great, isn’t it? Isn’t it _beautiful?_ )

They all think it’s beautiful. Always and forever. 

The mercenary listens, sips her drink, and says very little. But she listens well, and that’s the end of it. She says her name is Aro in the beginning, and smiles. Ben – he was still Ben in those days – thought the expression looked strange on her face. A little flat. _Lacking_ , though he can’t say exactly why. 

He’s twelve. She’s twenty. Not the first Force-sensitive they rounded up in the early days, but close to it. 

“Ben Solo,” she murmured, on the day they first met. She wrapped herself up in a dusty cloak and stolen, bloodstained armor in the back of Luke Skywalker’s ship. “Isn’t it?”

He nods. He was polite back then. 

Aro smiled. Her eyes looked like stones, utterly flat. “Do you know if it bleeds, child?”

“What?”

“The light.” She waved a hand vaguely towards the ceiling. “This _Force_. I feel in people sometimes. I can feel it in you. Sometimes I see it in the ground. I started digging once and I found the bones of jedi. They were dead but I still felt it. _Shining_. Do you think that’s strange, Ben Solo?”

Ben shrugged. The soldiers back home talked like that sometimes, about the ghosts who wandered through the galaxy. You’re not supposed to talk to the dead. They follow you home if you do that. “It’s the Force.”

That was – and remains – the answer to everything, once the details are stripped away. 

Aro thins her mouth at him. She never smiles with her teeth. Later, Kylo Ren will understand the reasons for this. “You’re a sweet boy. Such a sweet boy.”

**

After Aro there come the Vioc brothers, Siskin, and a boy with red eyes named Loomis. Daveed. A girl who names herself Sand for no reason that Ben can make himself understand. A mix of personalities and looks, but all of them so _curious_ , reaching out with open hands and half formed questions towards Luke Skywalker. 

Ben Solo likes most of them. They feel the same things he does. The gleam of the Force, the way it makes his hands shake. 

For a moment – for a little while – he feels something like _home_.

**

He doesn’t think of Aro very much after that. She’s twenty, he’s twelve, and she’s not very interesting outside of Force training. Ben tends towards the others, making clumsy attempts at friendship while Aro lingers towards the edge – always _there_ , but never quite present. Sometimes she brings him chocolate, a secret just between them. It’s a vague and occasional thing at best, though. They see each other almost every day, remade and reemerging anew under each lesson, but that does not make them _friends_. But they are going to be jedi, so he stands next to her and doesn’t shy away when her gaze falls on him. 

Something about it always feels appraising. But never quite a threat. Never quite enough to _do_ something about. 

She teaches him how to pass notes unseen and hide things in his hands and rewards him with chocolate whenever he gets it right. 

“Sweet boy,” she whispers, and pets his hair. 

Ben lets her, because he’s polite and she’s older than him and she gives him candy. He doesn’t _like_ it, doesn’t really like Aro at all, but you put up with adults if you want to be taken seriously. 

Later on she slips him a little bottle of amber-colored whiskey and laughs at the curious look on his face. He’s sixteen and she looks ageless in the gleam of the Force. For a moment she’s beautiful too, dark hair hanging down to her waist in long braids, and he calls her _eternal_.

Ben Solo had a thing for poetry back then. He thought it was part of the Force, and just as essential to survival as breathing. 

Ben Solo was a fucking moron, which is why Kylo Ren killed him. 

He remembers very well how Aro’s face contorted into a strange, blank thing when she heard that. 

“Sweet boy,” Aro hisses, not at all kindly, “don’t think I want to _fuck_ you.”

Ben Solo sputtered something in response, meaningless in all regards. He’s forgotten the exact words now. What he remembers is how Aro grabbed him by the hair and knocked his head against the wall so hard he saw galaxies explode before his eyes. 

Beautiful and terrible. The pain was much more immediate than any poem Ben Solo had ever laid eyes on, and somehow more important. 

She leans in close and pulls his hair, hard. He remembers crying, a little bit. “Aren’t you better than that, Ben Solo? You’re supposed to be _interesting_. No.”

Abruptly she let go, and Ben Solo – the moron – slipped to the floor. She broke his nose against the sandstone wall, ten feet away from their teacher and smiling classmates, none the wiser. It healed without a mark. No one else ever realized who had done it. 

Aro – who later would be called a lot of things, all of them lies and all of them very true – smiled down at him. The Force gleamed bright in her, shining like a star, though eventually Kylo Ren would surpass her brightness. That, too, was inevitable. 

Even back then, some part of him understood that. 

“You’re supposed to be _important_ ,” Aro murmured. She sounded almost confused. Disappointed. “ _He_ said you’d be important. But you’re so easy, Ben Solo, I can’t— _stand_ that. I really can’t.”

Aro sighed. “Fix your head, sweet boy. Or you’ll end up _boring_ , and what’s the point in that?”

**

Not long after that, Ben Solo ceases to be.

Kylo Ren doesn’t mind Aro so much. She’s useful. And she doesn’t pet his hair. 

Things change. Though perhaps not very much. She’s not the first to join him, though close to it, and far from the last. These things come in cycles. 

**

Later they try to kill Luke Skywalker. The Knights of Ren stand together and murder the ones who wouldn’t join them. It’s pathetically easy, even if Skywalker gets away. 

A setback, Kylo Ren thinks. It won’t stand for long. 

**

Only, as things turn out, it does. For much longer than expected. 

They lose people bit by bit. The Vioc brothers stood by Skywalker and bled out in front of him, Rat fought with the Knights but lost her nerve at the last moment – and so on.

There are others. They remake themselves by inches. People die. Knights rise. So it goes. 

Ben Solo died first. He wasn’t the last. And they can’t find Skywalker anywhere. 

In the beginning, Kylo Ren handled it almost - _almost_ \- reasonably. 

That might have been the problem.

**

“You’re small,” Aro tells him one night, on the bridge of a ship manned by soldiers in black uniforms. She’s crept up behind him, careless and far from silent. “So _small_ in your fancy robes, playing dress up. Do you have nightmares about our little friends? Tell me, sweet boy, do you still _cry_?”

He Force Chokes her, but that only makes her laugh harder. Kylo Ren sees bodies echoing through the Force, memories of what they all did, blood red and so _bright_ , and turns away. He wonders if the bones still gleam with the Force, if the very sand is marked by what they did. 

The Force remembers. Maybe the earth does as well.

Aro slinks off, wheezing and laughing in broken gasps, sounding far too pleased for something that almost _died_. Kylo Ren destroys three consoles and feels slightly better about the whole thing. 

**

Loomis goes blind, Sand goes insane, the smuggler they recruit up and dies one night. They lose people, or people lose themselves to the weakness. The rosters change. 

Eventually, there aren’t so many knights. They probably won’t meant to last. 

No matter, Kylo Ren thinks. He’ll make more if he needs them. Right now, there only needs to be him. 

**

Loyalty becomes something of a tested concept. New knights are trained. A few of the old ones are remade into more useful shapes. 

Aro strays. And like before, Kylo Ren doesn’t think of her until – quite suddenly – she makes herself relevant again. She does this by taking an apprentice, some sandy-haired brat won in a card game that scurries after her with angry, flint-sharp eyes and the crack of Force underfoot. 

The Supreme Leader seems pleased by this, which makes Kylo Ren shake with screaming fury. 

“You’re getting taller,” Aro announces one day, slapping his helmet carelessly – and so hard it almost knocks him off balance. “Don’t be _sour_ , sweet boy. We’re going on a vacation. The Supreme Leader commands it. Maybe I’ll get you drunk.”

They’re in company, so he’s obliged to Force Choke her until she passes out. 

It doesn’t seem to help much. She wakes up laughing.

**

They take a shuttle to some desert in a place that Kylo Ren remembers too clearly. The sandstone walls have crumbled to dust, all remnants of Skywalker and what foolish things were attempted long gone. Aro lies down on the spidery remains of Skywalker’s bed and does good on her promise to get Kylo drunk. The sandy-haired apprentice curls up at Aro’s feet and watches Kylo with open curiosity – and ambition. The girl probably had a name once, though it doesn’t appear that Aro’s deigned to give her a new one. 

For lack of a better idea – for inherit madness – Kylo drinks with her. 

They’re all a little crazy, his knights. 

“You,” Aro announces, “are _almost_ interesting.”

As far as insults go, he’s had worse. 

Kylo scowls at her. It’s tempting to kill her and take the apprentice out of spite, but then he’d have an apprentice and that wouldn’t _do_. “I’m stronger than you’ll ever be.”

Aro shrugs, not bothering to deny it. “You’ve got a shiny sword. How nice for you. Did you put their souls in it?”

“What?”

“The dead,” Aro says, impatiently. “Did you take their power for your own? You should do that, otherwise it’s a waste of perfectly fine bones.”

He’s not nearly drunk enough for this moment. Kylo decides to fix that, and drains his cup. 

It goes on like that for a while. The apprentice fills their cups and listens in rapt-eyed attention as they whisper secrets of the Force to the sandstone walls, where the students of Luke Skywalker once gathered. 

Two moons are high and red in the sky when Aro finally shoves her cup aside. “Come on, sweet boy.” Aro stands with a groan, splashing whiskey on her robes. Her collar has been loosened, baring her pale throat. “I’ve got a present for you.”

For a moment, Kylo thinks they’re going to fuck in the ruin of Luke Skywalker’s bed, and moves to shoo the apprentice away. The girl stares at him blankly and doesn’t move. 

Aro huffs, drunk and careless. “Get up, sweet boy, don’t let it go to waste.”

He’s drunk enough not to question it, and so Kylo Ren staggers off after Aro. They walk into the desert, where the shadows come and cover their tracks. The two moons shine red, but there is no light. Kylo looks through the Force and sees the ghosts lingering, much more dangerous than any story. He wonders if he could touch them, or if they’d disappear before his hands like any memory. 

“Come!” Aro hisses, slinking away through the dark. Kylo hurries to catch up. 

She takes him to an expanse of sand and dark no different from the expanse that surrounds them, except for the hole. It stretches down almost twenty feet, a gaping maw in the dark. Kylo stares at it blankly. 

If there’s supposed to be a gift here, he’s too drunk to appreciate it. 

The apprentice kicks a stone over the edge. It lands softly. 

Kylo gives Aro a flat look, wondering if she’s stupid enough to try and kill him. 

Aro – his _knight_ \- grins at him. Her eyes ought to shine in the dark, reflecting starlight and alcohol in equal measure, but they don’t. 

It occurs to him that Aro isn’t nearly as drunk as Kylo thought. 

That’s unfortunate. 

“I’d take this personally,” Aro suggests, and kicks him over the edge. 

Unlike the stone, Kylo doesn’t land softly. 

**

Kylo wakes up on his back, staring up at an unforgiving sun, and the sound buzzing flies. The smell comes to him second, something cloying and persistent and strangely reminiscent of dust. And that strange, throbbing tension of his hands that means the Force is present. He rolls over with a groan and presses his face against something soft. It reminds him of jedi robes, stupidly, and Kylo bangs his head down hard. Pain for clarity. 

Something _cracks_. And the Force blazes to life inside his skull, bright and blue just like the ocean, in a salty taste he remembers from another life. Kylo opens his eyes, blinking stupidly, and thinks, _Skywalker?_

The hollow-eyed skull grins back at him, leathery skin gone black around the temples. Flies buzz around a mouth full of shattered teeth. 

Kylo jerks back with a hiss, kicking up more bones. 

No, no….

He glares up at the sky, furiously. “Aro!”

But his knight is long gone. The sun blazes down on him, unforgiving in its fury. Kylo Ren pulls his cloak over his head and screams at the bones of all the almost-jedi he killed. 

**

The problem, of course, is that he’s hung-over and hot and _shaking_ , and the walls are dark sand and dangerously soft, the lip twenty feet out of reach. Kylo screams into his hands and the Force doesn’t come to him. 

The ghosts creep to him, in the blazing sun. They touch his hands. Whisper things. 

They say, _we forgive you_.

It hurts more than Kylo thought possible. 

And in the grave of his best friends, Ben Solo wails for what he did. 

**

The Force comes back eventually, as does his focus. The apprentice is waiting for him when he finally clambers over the edge, sweating and furious. Her slit throat grins at him like a promise, though the note pinned to her chest has nothing so cryptic about it. Just the coordinates to the shuttle, twenty miles to the north. Kylo balls the note up and throws it away. He’ll have to walk. 

He glares at the dead apprentice, who probably had a name once, and kicks her into the hole to lie with all the other ghosts. 

**

A gift, Aro said. She ruffles his hair when he finally staggers up to the shuttle. There’s no fondness in her expression, just vague interest. “Good,” Aro says. “You’re tall now. You’ll thank me later.”

**

Kylo strangles her on principal. He never did like the way she messed with his hair. But he thanks her for the gift by not killing her. 

It was, after all, useful, even if it did betray him. Like the rest of the Knights.


End file.
